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The latest proposal, from September 2000, is available here.

Here is where the latest news regarding this proposal will be posted.

And this isn't just a row over digital music, this is the European counterpart of the DMCA. To say that it has been hotly debated is an understatement. Especially concerning Article 5 and 6. 6.4 was added after May'99, btw.

The most important issue is weither 'circumvention devices' should be available to the general public or not. We need a better name for 'circumvention device', though. 'Tool that can be used for piracy, but is also required to exercise fair use rights that involve copying' would be more appropriate.

The latest proposal, from September 2000, is available here.

Here is where the latest news regarding this proposal will be posted.

And this isn't just a row over digital music, this is the European counterpart of the DMCA. To say that it has been hotly debated is an understatement. Especially concerning Article 5 and 6. 6.4 was added after May'99, btw.

The most important issue is weither 'circumvention devices' should be available to the general public or not. We need a better name for 'circumvention device', though. 'Tool that can be used for piracy, but is also required to exercise fair use rights that involve copying' would be more appropriate.

For those who don't enjoy reading EU directives, there's a Commission press release from 9 June 2000 here. Be warned, however, it is even more vague than the directive, especially on circumvention measures.

For those who don't enjoy reading EU directives, there's a Commission press release from 9 June 2000 here. Be warned, however, it is even more vague than the directive, especially on circumvention measures.

There is probably no governing body in the world that is "a model of efficiency", so that's hardly an argument unless you know something better. Fact is, the US have been declaiming themselves the one true democracy in the world, and leader of all nations, at the same time balking at paying their agreed financial contribution needed to uphold the UN. But I should return to the matter at hand. Yes, the US started the internet, the first true democracy since the ancient Greeks thought of the concept, and now their baby had grown to a faltering maturity, they should relinquish their inclination to control it beyond their borders. As every other nation in the world. The UN, or another independent global institution, should conduct a research of law globally, including every nation and minority therein, and construct an international Law, hopefully with the Declaration of Human Rights as a constitution. There should be a court, widely recognised, with judges not appointed by any government, but apolitically, like the International Court in the Hague, to adjudicate, and we're getting closer to the basics of a world government. But of course most governments won't want to give up their own powers, as we can see in the lamentable struggles towards an European Union, and the fears of the US to recognise the International Court.

But to the point: the internet has outgrown the US, and if it was still 1990, or so, control would easily be distributed amongst those deserving, and with the current knowledge, the TLDs, that aren't country based, would be administered internationally. Alas, that is not how it came to pass, but I feel very strongly, that no single givernment should be able to exert decisive influence on the shaping of the internet, unless they tone down the influence of mighty companies. The internet used to be the only true democracy, bordering on the best of anarchy, but now everyone and his dog wants to get their claws on us and cream us.

Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-

The way to do something in Europe is to respond to the European Commission's consultation on software patents. Hurry!

Most web pages available in a choice of 11 languages (US English excluded ;) )

Whats new section detailing daily events in the EU and new web pages uploaded

Custom search engine

More than one method available to find information i.e. search engine, menus, by subject

Heavily text based, i.e still usable for the visually impaired or on text based browsers (ie Lynx)

User centred design (Obligatory Kharma Whoring Nielson reference)

Like Slashdot the site is updated on a daily basis, so the content is never out of date

We're not really celebrating, just relieved that the situation has not gotten any worse for the time being. The European Patent Convention specifically excludes computer programs from patentability, but a few years ago the EPO decided to ignore this exclusion and start granting software patents anyway.

What they did was to argue that a computer program with a technical effect is not a 'computer program as such' and thus the exclusion does not apply. Of course, any important algorithm or technique can be said to have a 'technical effect'.

So we have the situation where patents are being granted, but possibly illegally. The enforceability of these patents is doubtful. The EPO would like to change the written law so that it matches the creative new interpretation, making software explicitly patentable (and making the patents already granted more likely to be enforceable). Any move to do this has been put on hold pending the European Commission's consultation.

The eventual aim is to reinstate the law as it is written, so that computer programs (whether 'as such' or 'not as such') are not affected by the patent system.

What you can do: reply to the consultation (download the consultation paper in PDF format, you might also want to point out flaws in the accompanying economic study), sign Eurolinux's petition, and contact your national representatives. In some countries (eg the UK) national patent offices are holding their own consultations.

The problem is not so much the EU as the European Patent Convention (EPC) and its patent office, the EPO. Most countries are members of both, but some non-EU members are part of the EPC. (And some EU members might leave the EPC - IIRC a German minister (Green party) said Germany would leave the EPC if software patents were allowed.)

Now the Convention specifically excludes computer programs from patentability, but the EPO has managed to bend the law by saying that many computer programs 'are not computer programs as such'. Hence the swpat horror gallery, full of patents on computer programs 'not as such'.

The EPO would like to change the law (the Convention) to remove this exclusion, letting the law 'catch up' with the EPO's bending of it. This would give real weight to the patents already granted, which at present are of dubious validity.

What has happened is that EPC members have voted to wait for the outcome of the European Commission's (ie the EU's) consultation before reaching a decision. This makes it even more important to send your comments on software patents to the Commission and possibly to your national political representatives.

The Commission have commissioned (!) a slightly biased but not totally stupid report on the economic impact of software patents, and are invit ing comments. What the Commission recommends will heavily influence the decision made by EPC members.

The whole schebang has to do with "European countries' collective political determination to establish a uniform patent system in Europe." Note, though, that from trawling through Europa earlier today, I get the impression that the final aim - a European Patent - has not yet been reached. So for now, member states signed up to EPO, it may be assumed, will amend their national legislation to match the EPO resolution.

It is very important to note that these patents represent threats to European software developers in the future, rather than things which have already happened.

The European Patent Convention (EPC) specifically forbids patents on computer programs, but the European Patent Office (EPO) has tried to bend this rule by saying that a computer program with a 'technical effect' is not a computer program 'as such'. This has allowed them to start granting patents on software even though software is clearly excluded by the EPC. So all the computer programs described in this patent horror gallery are considered by the EPO as not being computer programs 'as such'.

However, not everyone agrees with this ingenious new definition. So 'software patents' as granted by the EPO are not necessarily enforceable. But what the EPO is now trying to do is to have the law changed so that they can happily grant software patents without the inconvenience of having to redefine terms used by existing laws. If software is made patentable, all the software patents granted will suddenly become enforceable and leave European companies open to attack.

So it's not too late to do something about this. The European Commission is holding a publi c consultation asking for comments on whether the law should be changed, and many national patent offices are doing the same. (The EPO and EPC are not part of the European Union, but there is an overlapping membership and many countries are waiting for the Commission to make a recommendation.)

Also sign EuroLinux's petition which gives some links for more information about what I wrote above.

Also available in french and german.

This is really something, where You can change something, don't just sign the petition and think it'll all get fine.

Also available in french and german.

This is really something, where You can change something, don't just sign the petition and think it'll all get fine.

Also available in french and german.

This is really something, where You can change something, don't just sign the petition and think it'll all get fine.

Despite what many patent attorneys claim, according the law (Art 52 EPC), computer programs (which are not part of a hardware machine) are not patentable in the European Community (nor India).

However, in Europe courts and the EPO revision boards have frequently yielded to patent applicants desires, so that legal text and patent grant practice and jurisdiction have been in dischord in many EU countries (less so in France or UK, more so in Germany).

The European Commission (as well as the UKPTO, see learned from mickwd's posting) is currently doing a revision of the EU patent law and till 15 Dec 2000, inviting comments on patentability of software.

With legal spirit and practice being divided, the decision may either widen or narrow to the distance to US/AU/JP/ZH (or IN, on the other hand).

If you do have an opinion the road EU should take, please respond to this invitation. You also might consider supporting petition.eurolinux.org or freepatents.org.

From the article: Interested parties, the public at large and Member States are invited to comment until 15 December 2000 on the basis of this consultation paper.

Most /. readers work with free software in one way or another; therefore we are interested parties. So where do we add our comments? I saw no "Reply" button or anything on the page.

A long time ago, common law recognized it as a crime if I drew my fist back and punched you in the nose. That crime is called battery. (Note, IANAL, nor do I play one on TV.)

But at first, merely drawing my fist back (or nocking an arrow, drawing a dagger, etc) was not considered a crime. Later law decided that if I act in a way towards you that would put a reasonable person in fear of harm, then I have committed the crime of assault. Note the introduction of the "legal value of sensations."

But these two laws still only relate to physical harm. What if I tell lies about you in the marketplace, and ruin your reputation and ability to earn a living? To fix this bug, new law was developed to define the crime of libel. Over the years, libel was even extended to cover the general notion of a reputation, though it can still be hard to prove non-financial harm. Note the introduction of an informational crime.

But what if I can harm you by telling the truth about you? Maybe by revealing some medical information, or something about a minor crime you committed as a kid, or an embarrassing thing you once bought, or publishing your private diary, etc.

Well, society is still struggling with that one. The modern notion of privacy was articulated by Warren and Brandeis who saw civil society protecting a fundamental "right to be let alone" and occasionally acknowledging that additional components of that right were in need of protection.

Thus the right to privacy derives from a trend over many hundreds of years of common law. Obviously, your privacy can be invaded by either governments, corporations, or individuals. The question is: what forms of protection do you need against which actors?

The web site referred to, privacilla.org, is funded by a group of economic libertarian organizations. In general, these people see a need for governmental protection against physical and financial harm. But they're not too big on recognition of other forms of harm. So their arguments assume that financial harm is the major thing to protect against, and that it can be traded off against financial benefit.

Personally, I can see other harms to the individual and society, especially in an information intensive society, and these harms don't seem to interest the economic libertarians. For example, some sexual and religious and political activities and affiliations become very unpopular in society from time to time. If people live under the constant threat that their affiliations and predilictions might be exposed, many will simply be too fearful to exercise their supposed freedoms.

Personally, I want to extend peoples' freedom to think and do, not restrict it, and I think laws that define and recognize an individual's right to privacy are an excellent step in that direction. I think an ideal model for such laws is the Fair Information Practices:

1. There must be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very existence is secret.

2. There must be a way for an individual to find out what information about him is on record and how it is used.

3. There must be a way for an individual to correct or amend a record of identifiable information about him.

4. There must be a way for an individual to prevent information about him that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for other purposes without his consent.

5. Any organization creating, maintaining, using, or disseminating records of identifiable personal data must guarantee the reliability of the data for their intended use and must take precautions to prevent misuse of the data.

These principles were incorporated into U.S. law in the Privacy Act of 1974, which required the Federal government to obey them. they were also adopted in 1980 in a treaty by the Council of Europe and have become law governing both governments and private organizations in European Union countries.

So the Fair Information Practices Priciples aren't exactly new and untested. I think the next thing we should do in the U.S. is pass laws requiring that corporations and state governments also follow the Fair Information Practices. Thanks for listening.

Lee Campbell

Often in error, never in doubt!

DigiCash was founded in 1990 by cryptologist David Chaum (site apparently not updated in recent years...) who owned the two (three?) major patents covering completely anonymized digital cash. To my knowledge it still isn't certain whether it's possible to create a truly anonymous digital money scheme without violating these patents.

Like you said, David is a great mathematician, and an even greater evangelist/idealist (i once attended a lecture of his on cryptology protocols which he turned into a sort of political rally). But he wasn't an unqualified succes as a bussinessman (ahem). Due to various mismanagement problems Digicash went broke in 1998. About a year ago, all Digicash IP (including the patents, source code and the url) was bought out of the brankcupty by startup eCash Technologies inc., located in Seattle.

Though superficially somewhat similar to something like PayPal, this system, should it become viable, will have a far wider impact. Truly anonymous digital cash with a high solvability is something that will strike fear into the heart of every government economist on the planet. Should it ever become implemented, it will change the nature of the internet, and society itself won't escaped unharmed either.

That being said, they don't appear to have made much progress yet in securing deals with major financial institutions, which will probably be a neccesity to make it a success.

Go here for a good list of ecash related links.

"The European Commission reported on ? that European and foreign-owned firms seeking access to the US market for communication services still face considerable barriers, particularly in the satellite services and the mobile services sectors. According to the Commission "this situation is not in line with the market access policy advocated by the US, and provides a competitive advantage to the significant number of US companies that have already access to the European market in these fields." Furthermore, the Commission has also identified a number of US laws and policies on Internet and electronic commerce which could impact negatively on the business of European companies, particularly in the fields of Internet domain names and cybersquatting, encryption and patentability of software and business methods."

From the EU pressrelease:

The subject matter of the US proceedings against Microsoft and the allegations the Commission is investigating are different. The allegations being examined by the Commission are that Microsoft extended its dominance in the PC operating systems market to the server operating systems market. The thrust of the proceedings launched by the US Department of Justice revolves around Microsoft protecting its dominance in PC operating systems through measures aimed at weakening Netscape's Navigator Internet browser and Sun's Java system. A US Court has found that Microsoft, by virtue of its conduct, has attempted to monopolise the Internet Browser market. At the EU level, the Commission will continue to examine the cases pending with all due diligence and will take any appropriate steps in due time.

As can be seen from these shotlists, the House has voted to establish a committee on Echelon. The first meeting is planned for September 9th, 2000.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/ebs/s hotlist/ref15543.htm
http://europa.eu.int/comm/ebs/s hotlist/ref15545.htm

There are also five volumes packed with good stuff (some by the mentioned author himself) at http://www.europa rl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pdf/98-14-01-1en.pdf
(and 2en.pdf, 3en.pdf, etc.)

Enjoy your reading!

As can be seen from these shotlists, the House has voted to establish a committee on Echelon. The first meeting is planned for September 9th, 2000.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/ebs/s hotlist/ref15543.htm
http://europa.eu.int/comm/ebs/s hotlist/ref15545.htm

There are also five volumes packed with good stuff (some by the mentioned author himself) at http://www.europa rl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pdf/98-14-01-1en.pdf
(and 2en.pdf, 3en.pdf, etc.)

Enjoy your reading!

While I like this from a crypto standpoint, I can't help but wonder why the sudden change in policy

Most of the EU countries have previously supported encryption (UK and France being notable exceptions). The change in policy is "sudden" only if you consider that previous policy to be the one specified in the Wassenaar agreement, which was pushed down the throats of other countries by US bullies.

I'm guessing that corporations have been pushing for this and exerting power to make this happen. While I'm glad they did, it is another example of money buying policy (and for once, not in the US).

While there certainly are economic incentives to protect the interests of the european cryptography industry, the conspiracy theory is needless in this case. The idea for the change probably came from the Directorate-General for the Information Society, which is spear-headed by Erkki Liikanen (who was also quoted in the article). See these links for more information:

• Mission of the Directorate-General for the Information Society
• Speech by Erkki Liikanen
• The World by Commissioner Erkki Liikanen, European Commission

Geeeeeezzzzzz, Hemos, pay attention old chap! :-) The UK is a member of the EU and has been for 27 years. We're not (yet) a member of the common European currency which I suppose might be where the confusion arises. The comments about our legal system got me a bit pissed off as well but that's OT so I'll just leave it there.

On the trade front, there was a moratorium on import duties concerning anything sent over the web: this moratorium ran from 1998 to end-99: it is no longer in place, formally, but nobody is planning to try to put customs duties on the net. Domestic taxes (sales tax, VAT) are a different matter, they are not covered by WTO: OECD in Paris is currently discussing what to do. The dilemma is that it is hard to tax immaterial things...

On the trade front, there was a moratorium on import duties concerning anything sent over the web: this moratorium ran from 1998 to end-99: it is no longer in place, formally, but nobody is planning to try to put customs duties on the net. Domestic taxes (sales tax, VAT) are a different matter, they are not covered by WTO: OECD in Paris is currently discussing what to do. The dilemma is that it is hard to tax immaterial things...

Europe is a socialist state. the telcos are run by gov'ts. Here in the greatest country in the history of the world, the market determines who gets what.

You should align your view with reality:
In all EU member states, telcos have been privatized and there's full competition.

First the French, then the Germans and tomorrow the WORLD.

Nope. Tomorrow is the European Union's turn. With the French and the German gov't supporting OSS, this should be a snap.

The World will take until next week...

Well, actually current EU legislation protects programs as literary works. The patent system doesn't allow software patents, but the new proposed utility model (a weaker patent), which has a shorter duration and is easier to get, seems to allow software patents (the proposal from -97 didn't, but the newest version removed all clauses on the exclusion of software from protection). AFAIK the utility model only concerns commercial use (unless they change that in the future). Algorithms won't be protected since they are mathematical methods and are not in the scope of the utility model.

You can read some of the EU patent legislation here. Note that this probably not the whole of the legislation because the WTO agreements in favor of the total economic domination of large corporations seem to change the game a bit (look up the TRIPS agreement)...

It seems to. Visit the legal wording.

It says (in Paragraph 1) "Insofar as loading, displaying, running, transmision or storage of the computer program necessitate such reproduction, such acts shall be subject to authorization by the rightholder."

To my reading, it means that the MPAA is well within its rights to not let you play DVD on Linux.

On the other hand, it seems that the judge has decided that DVD information isn't a 'computer program' (software); on yet another hand, they do state "...Member States shall protect computer programs, by copyright, as literary works within the meaning of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works."


--

Says to me that (in Paragraph 1) "Insofar as loading, displaying, running, transmision or storage of the computer program necessitate such reproduction, such acts shall be subject to authorization by the rightholder," meaning that the DVD guys are well within their rights to not let you play DVD on Linux; Further, "The provisions of paragraph 1 shall not permit the information obtained through its application: (a) to be used for goals other than to achieve the interoperability of the independently created computer program; (b) to be given to others, except when necessary for the interoperability of the independently created computer program; or (c) to be used for the development, production or marketing of a computer program substantially similar in its expression, or for any other act which infringes copyright," which seems to mean that DeCSS can't be distributed to others and perhaps can't even be developed seeing as it provides software functionality that is identical to existing DVD player software (tho' through other OSes). I think the evile movie empire moguls are trying to strike the fear of ghod into hackers... but I think they're also doing it well within the legal boundaries. Or so it seems from that legal text.

--

Please read this legal text.

If I am not mistaken:

This text says that it is legal, within the EU, to reverse-engineer a program you hold a license to, even without the author's consent, provided you do it to ensure compatibility and the necessary information was not available to you.

1/ What does norwegian law say about writing software to circumvent copy protection?

European law (Council Directive 91/250/EEC of 14 May 1991 on the legal protection of computer programs) explicitly authorizes reverse engineering of programs to ensure compatibility:

Decompilation 1. The authorization of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of Article 4 (a) and (b) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:[...]

I am not a lawyer and I don't know whether this applies to your cause or not.

2/ What do you think of the fact that some obscure Californian courts is prosecuting foreigners for alleged intellectual property offenses committed abroad, possibly legally according to the law of their home country?

Directive 91/250/EEC approved May 14, 1991 contains explicit provisions (look for "Decompilation 1", the document isn't formatted nicely) stating that reverse engineering is absolutely legal when done:

1. by someone holding the right to use or licensed to use a software product, and
2. as long as reverse engineering is needed to ensure interoperability with other systems or software (even if developed in-house).

So, it seems that reverse engineering that XING player in order to ensure interoperability with Linux was perfectly legal (in EU), and all the obscurity called for by DVD CCA was just a means to make it difficult for anyone to exercise this right.

As for all European Directives, 91/250 had to be accepted by the various national parliaments before becoming effective. The Italian variant of the directive, D.Lgs. 29/12/92 n. 518, is quite explicit on this respect (see Art. 5, modifications to Art. 64-quater -- in Italian!); I don't know about Norway, though.

Moreover, any contractual clause seeking to limit the rights to "observe, study, and test the software in order to understand its working principles" are deemed void by the law, so even calling that the original license agreement prohibited reverse engineering should not be a valid defense line. This, obviously, holds for Europe. I doubt an US court has any jurisdiction on the people writing DeCSS...

If they can't agree on this, how will we ever get 180+ countries to agree on copyright law?

They(*) don't have to. They are already implementing TRIPS which will do it for them.

(*) - Here "They" refers to the EU, but I'm pretty sure the Digital Millenium Copyright Act will bring the US into compliance as well.

Think about how much the EU governments seem to care about citizen privacy when compared to the US government.

You mean those EU goverments that impose directives limiting the collection of personal data? (See the Directorate General XV, for Media, Information Society and Data Protection page on the EU's Web site.)

Look, France, Germany, and other European governments are giving up some sovereignty to be a part of the EU.

And some in Europe are, I have the impression, not certain that this is all A Good Idea; they may or may not be correct in that belief, but I think at least some of them think that the fiscal policies needed to meet the Maastricht criteria may have increased unemployment.

ohhh, while watching CNN, I just saw an advertisement for you're little 'protest' "lets go to Seattle and put that on the WTO agenda www.adbusters.org

The notion of "a slick television advertisement" from Adbusters seems a bit odd, given that they spend a fair bit of energy arguing against "slick television advertisements" (and other advertisements, hence the name). The WTO Uncommercial page on their site ask for donations to help fund those advertisements - in modern societies, it may be that you have to advertise on TV to make your viewpoint widely known.

I may not agree with all of what Adbusters says, but I, at least, think it's a Good Thing that there're more ads on TV than just ads trying to seduce you into buying product XXX....

Think about how much the EU governments seem to care about citizen privacy when compared to the US government.

You mean those EU goverments that impose directives limiting the collection of personal data? (See the Directorate General XV, for Media, Information Society and Data Protection page on the EU's Web site.)

Look, France, Germany, and other European governments are giving up some sovereignty to be a part of the EU.

And some in Europe are, I have the impression, not certain that this is all A Good Idea; they may or may not be correct in that belief, but I think at least some of them think that the fiscal policies needed to meet the Maastricht criteria may have increased unemployment.

ohhh, while watching CNN, I just saw an advertisement for you're little 'protest' "lets go to Seattle and put that on the WTO agenda www.adbusters.org

The notion of "a slick television advertisement" from Adbusters seems a bit odd, given that they spend a fair bit of energy arguing against "slick television advertisements" (and other advertisements, hence the name). The WTO Uncommercial page on their site ask for donations to help fund those advertisements - in modern societies, it may be that you have to advertise on TV to make your viewpoint widely known.

I may not agree with all of what Adbusters says, but I, at least, think it's a Good Thing that there're more ads on TV than just ads trying to seduce you into buying product XXX....

The European Union rules (see Europa) are much more open than the NAFTA rules are, though. An Irish citizen can legally live in France and commute to Germany without any legal problems in getting work permits, residence permits, and the like.